China’s Central Television’s Bitcoin Mining Facility Documentary

Wang, the owner of five mining sites in China, is twenty years old.

Last week on July 11, China’s Central Television (CCTV-2) channel aired a special documentary on bitcoin mining operations located in Kangding county in the southwest region of the country. The channels news reporter drives to a desolate mountainous area in Sichuan to visit a three-story mining data center. Each floor is filled with mining rigs housed on metal racks and surrounded by massive fans. CCTV also interviews Wang, the young data center owner in his twenties who runs five mining sites in the area. According to a translation from the local publication, 8btc, Wang says he runs a medium sized data center that can grow bigger. The twenty-year-old native says the operation mines 16 BTC (US$30,000) a day.

“We are a middle-sized mining factory with 5000 bitcoin miners,” explains Wang. “We still have room to run another 5000 mining machines.”

Electrical cable lines running from the hydropower stations that power the Kangding bitcoin mine.

Wang and the data center’s operations manager Xu says lots of people are choosing to set up mining sites in Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Inner Mongolia. The reason for this is cheaper electricity from hydropower stations located in the mountains. Wang details that typically electricity in China is 0.7 yuan per KwH, but by partnering with neighboring hydropower stations mining facilities are paying 0.3 yuan per KwH (about 0.045 USD at the time of writing).

“[Electricity] is directly transmitted from nearby hydropower stations,” Wang tells the CCTV journalist. “This is mainly why we set up the site here. Bitcoin mining is electricity-consuming and 50 percent of our profits go to the electricity bill.”

The price is the outcome of our negotiation with the hydropower station. Put simply, we made a deal with them and give them part of our profits. They provide electricity, we provide machines, and we share the profits. It’s win-win.

‘Why Should We Pay Taxes for Playing Games?’

According to CCTV’s broadcast, an executive at the Sichuan Electric Power Company says that these mining sites are not supposed to partner with hydropower stations. The sites have been investigated he says, but nothing materialized from the local government inspection. Furthermore, Wang says he doesn’t pay taxes for his bitcoin revenue.

“Why should I?…We are mining bitcoin, it’s all about computational power. It’s like playing games. Why should we pay taxes for playing games?”

A Sichuan Bitcoin Miner‘s Dorm Life

Another report from the Chinese photographer Liu Xingzhe covers the interesting world of Chinese bitcoin mines. Liu’s photographs show workers at data centers in another area located in the Sichuan prοvince living in dormitories and taking care of machines for weeks on end. Many of the workers travel from other towns and hitchhike to the remote mountainous region to make a better salary than most local jobs.

Sichuan prοvince bitcoin mine owner Lui is also in his twenties. A Chinese bitcoin data center worker tends to a broken machine in the middle of the night.

Miners at Lui’s farm work during all hours of the day and evening reassembling calculatiοn bοards and fixing malfunctioning machines in the middle of the night. Lui tells the publication he has moved his mining operation from Henan to Sichuan to leverage the cheaper electricity in the region. Additionally, Lui details that he manages roughly 7,000 mining rigs for clients located in China.

Lui meeting business clients at his Sichuan data center.The bitcoin mine dorm room where workers spend weeks on end tending to machines.

One of the bitcoin mine workers explains that the nearest town is roughly 20 miles away and there is nowhere to spend money near the facilities. “Τhe gοοd thing is, there isn’t anywhere tο spend mοney, sο yοu can save yοur whοle salary,” οne miner tοld the photographer Liu Χingzhe.

What do you think about the Chinese bitcoin mining operations? Let us know in the comments below.

Do you want to vote on important Bitcoin issues? Bitcoin.com has acquired Bitcoinocracy, and rebranded the project to Vote.bitcoin.com. Users simply sign a statement with a non-empty Bitcoin address and express their opinions. The project focuses on determining truth backed by monetary value and transparency.

Prime brokerage firms are coming for crypto in what’s likely to be a race of winner-takes-almost-all. Goldman Sachs is synonymous… read more.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

In Case You Missed It

Greta Thunberg Joins Satoshi Questioning Bank Bailouts

Saving planet Earth is a noble goal with many different dimensions. Climate change needs to be addressed vigorously as our world warms up faster than ever. Economic development needs a higher degree of financial freedom to provide everyone access to opportunities and wealth. A teenager from Scandinavia, dubbed a “next generation leader,” has once again challenged governments and politicians. “If we can save the banks, we can save the world,” Sweden’s Greta Thunberg told those who always find money to postpone the problems but often claim real solutions are too expensive… read more.

The Bitcoin.com Wallet: Available on all platforms

Download the Bitcoin.com Wallet right to your device for easy and secure access to your bitcoins. Perfect for beginners, the Bitcoin.com Wallet makes using and holding bitcoins easy. No logins required.